The Voice winner Diana Rouvas’ single hits a low
The Voice winner Diana Rouvas has set a record she and Channel 9 would rather forget with her new single setting a chart low. So does the flop mark a demise for the reality music show?
Confidential
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Voice winner Diana Rouvas has set a new record — the lowest-selling winner’s single to come out of the hit TV show.
Rouvas’ Wait For No One missed the entire ARIA Top 500, meaning it sold less than 788 copies last week (which is what Pink’s Just Give Me a Reason sold at No. 500).
It now beats Alfie Arcuri’s Cruel, which sold 1458 copies to debut at No. 89 in 2016.
Rouvas won a record deal with EMI as part of her victory, as well as $100,000 cash.
The label let Rouvas co-write the rock/soul-influenced song, which some fans felt deviated away from the power ballads she performed on the show.
However as of this week Wait For No One has had only 7000 streams on Spotify — the song was not released on the streaming platform until 48 hours after her win, but was available on Apple Music and iTunes.
A similar exclusivity deal was done last year’s winner’s single by Sam Perry which charted at No. 78 on 2414 sales.
Rouvas’ Voice coach Boy George tweeted a Spotify link to the track to his 400,000 followers, saying it had a Rufus and Chaka Khan feel.
The official lyric video for Rouvas’ track on You Tube has only had 9300 views on her channel, although her grand final performance has been viewed 140,000 times on The Voice’s channel.
The song is not in Apple Music’s Top 100 streamed songs in Australia.
Paul Cashmere of music website Noise 11 said from streams and You Tube views, which are distilled into a sales equivalent by ARIA, Rouvas’ first week figure could have been as low as 300 sales.
“Over a million viewers watched the song on the grand final of The Voice, how does that break to around 300 sales at best?,” Cashmere said.
“It’s because it’s disposable. It’s entertainment while it’s on the screen and it’s forgotten the second it’s off the screen.
“A reality music show is a TV show, it’s the TV industry, not the music industry. That’s why the songs don’t chart, because it’s not about music, it’s about TV.”
The only Voice song left in the iTunes download chart is Kim Sheehy’s cover of Both Sides Now at No. 44.
Rouvas previously had two ARIA Top 30 hits in 2012 during her first appearance on The Voice.
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She scored a record deal with Universal at the time, which was due to result in an EP, however she requested to leave her contract.
Rouvas had a new album’s worth of material written which she dipped into for Wait For No One.
EMI are expected to continue working with Rouvas on new music.
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